I'd heard great things about this, with some movie critics even calling it the best film of 2016. It wasn't. Don't get me wrong it's not a bad film. It is very well made and the two female leads are extremely convincing. Where I had trouble was:
"slight" spoilers below
-The sheer amount of metaphors for terror/oppression that we are getting. The missile, the crack in the roof, the book, the garage door, her dead mother, the husband, the doll, the djinn ghost, the mute kid, the door slamming, the tape on the windows, the locked drawer etc etc etc
They all jumble up in to one big metaphor of oppression and terror that she experiences. Which is fine but it was just too overbearing.
Maybe I over-analysed this movie in looking for one single thing that was driving her to have a breakdown, when it was all of the things she was experiencing in her life. I'm not sure, but it just felt muddled and I felt that Babadook was a better movie of this kind of subject. Disappointed 6/10
Utterly depressing. This film centers on a family threatened while living in Tehran during the peak of the Iran-Iraq war. To make matters worse, the mother has been denied the ability to continue her medical studies. I guess the university of...(never mentioned), didn't care for her political activism. It's never mentioned just who or what she protested or whether her denial to study is because she's a woman. What is to be taken from this is that she is being oppressed. Ultimately, she and her daughter would have been haunted whether she was actively attending medical school or not. I guess being haunted by a djinn is explained as being brought on by stress. Seems the bombing of the city you live in and social and political oppression would bring plenty of that so...point taken.
I've got a lot of patience and watch a good amount of older films, most of which would be consider slow moving. But "Under the Shadow" is at times, excruciatingly slow. I also watch a lot of Horror and what this movie does do well is put its main characters in a very tenuous situation. The war itself is far more threatening than the djinn. The daughter's doll is something that the djinn took that needs to be recovered before they can flee the city and the war. The lost doll is causing the little girl to run a high fever, courtesy of the djinn having it in their possession. The problem is that far too much time is spent looking for the lost doll. It made the movie painfully slow.
The djinn are a threat only because they are the cause of the daughter's illness. The threat they presented was nothing like the one brought about by the war outside. The story centers on the wrong threat. The djinn felt more like that bratty neighborhood bully that won't give you your stuff back.
Finally, "Under the Shadow" relies way too much on jump scares. The haunting of the characters by the djinn seemed to dissipate almost immediately after the mother and daughter lose sight of them. Then they casually climb back into the same bed that they were just pulled from. I avoided the dub and watched the movie in its original language with English subtitles.
The only thing worth mentioning about the film is the continuous representation of the repression of freedoms in Iran. It does not contribute anything else.
This one was a pleasant surprise! First horror from Iran I've seen...
Excellent cast, scary at times and interesting to see other mythical influences in the genre.
Well made film but not particularly scary. The last half hour is intense though.
Like telling ghost stories during the daytime, this is a routine tale dragged out into an unflattering light.
The ‘horror’ in this film didn’t surmount to much; the characters never felt like they were in any immediate danger. For the most part, they suffered from nightmares and a couple of poltergeist-y events, but…that was it. We didn’t see enough of this poltergeist or demon, in my opinion.
Could’ve passed as a war film almost as much as a horror.
Clearly similar to The Babadook and unfortunately not quite as coherent in its allegory. That said it is effective at managing tension. Several of the visual flourishes of the film worked very well. The camera movement was fluid and consistently beautiful, enough to make up for the shortcomings of the narrative.
Pathetic garbage, really unwatchable and boring
Shout by DeletedBlockedParent2017-10-08T17:23:13Z
Well this was disappointing.
"Under the Shadow" is an extremely unoriginal horror film that copies "The Babadook" way too much. It's unbearable to watch. I really wanted to like this, I really do. Unfortunately this did nothing for me, as it didn't scare me or got under my skin.